Until You Fall – Oculus Quest Review

“Until You Fall” is a hack & slash game that puts you in the shoes of an immortal being with the power to control time. The game has been designed by developers who have worked on titles such as “Call of Duty”, “Halo”, and “The Witcher”.

The until you fall oculus quest 2 is a VR hack and slash game that is free to download and play. It has been developed by Oculus Quest.

Until You Fall brings a refreshingly unique approach to VR sword fighting which combines the satisfaction of a hack & slash game with the depth of RPG combat, all wrapped up in a VR-native design. The game’s Quest port is a near-perfect translation from its PC counterpart which benefits from the lack of tether.

 

Gameplay

Until You Fall is a rogue-lite VR melee combat game in which you battle your way through chambers of foes until you are struck down, only to rise up stronger and more experienced in your next encounter.

Rather than the purely physics-based approach of a VR melee combat game like Blade & Sorcery, Until You Fall delivers a somewhat more abstract experience. From the outside, the ‘block’ and ‘combo’ markers might make the game look arcade-ish, but there’s heaps of depth hiding underneath. Not only does this approach leave room for meta-game strategy—like which weapons you use and how you use them—it also allows the game to carefully set the ‘pace’ of combat to make it both challenging and rewarding without the intermittent funkiness that often comes with a pure-physics approach.

But make no mistake: Until You Fall is an aggressive game in which you can easily break a sweat. Although the overall gesture is more important than making exact contact with the enemy’s hitbox for hits and blocks, you’ll still need to make powerful swings in the appropriate places and at the right time to succeed.

The fighting in Until You Fall is entirely determined by each enemy’s “shield” meter, which must be broken before you can begin slashing away at their health bar. Hitting adversaries and preventing their attacks both deal shield damage. You can get a few hits in here and there because they can attack you at any time while their shield is up, but you’ll mostly be on the defensive until their barrier is down. Once their shield is shattered, it’s your turn to wreak havoc by swinging in the appropriate direction for a series of devastating hits. Some adversaries will perish after a single combo set, while others will require their shields torn down many times before falling—at least until you gain more power.

 

There are two sorts of progression in Until You Fall: temporary upgrades that you unlock during the current run but disappear later, and permanent upgrades to your weapons that you buy in the hub area between runs. You may upgrade your weapons as well as purchase new weapons from a reasonably broad range. However, rather than being determined solely by your metrics, your efficacy is partly determined by the quality of your performance.

Each weapon has its own set of attributes, and deciding which weapons to bring into battle is a big deal because it may change everything about how you play, from your general fighting strategy to the way you swing.

This is what makes the combat in Until You Fall so compelling. You might use a dagger as your blocking weapon since it’s light and quick, and an axe as your attacking weapon because it deals a lot of damage in one run. You may pair a broadsword—which has a good combination of range and speed—with an amulet—which enhances stats but can’t be used to block—in the next run. Alternatively, you might attack with two daggers for speed and hope to find the mid-run upgrade that enhances damage when you switch between blades.

Because the mace is too slow for rapid blocks and the broadsword causes more damage to health than shields, I elected to block and combo with my broadsword during one of my stronger runs in the Quest version of Until You Fall. As I progressed through the run, I obtained a couple mid-run upgrades that increased the shield damage dealt by my mace, transforming it into a brute-force shield smasher that I would swing with abandon while concentrating on precise blocking and combos with my sword.

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That’s just one weapon pairing and fighting strategy idea; there are plenty more to come up with, test, and master.

It takes some time to get your head around all of the processes at work, and this is one area where Until You Fall might need a little more clarity. It will take some back-and-forth comparisons between menus and a few plays to figure out the differences between permanent and temporary weapon bonuses, player bonuses, weapon sockets, block damage, shield damage, and health damage. The UI might be revamped to make it clearer which upgrades are temporary and which are permanent (as well as whether the upgrade applies to the player or the weapon) to help players learn the underlying mechanics faster. The game may also benefit from a clearer explanation of how each weapon’s “physical” weight affects how fast it moves. When it comes to choosing your equipment and how you’ll utilize it, this is a crucial factor to consider.

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The meta-game features are mixed with satisfying and demanding moment-to-moment fighting that will test your mettle and leave you wanting to squeeze in just one more run, despite the fact that they are a little murky at first.

Runs start out simple enough, and with a few upgrades to your weaponry, you’ll be chopping down fodder with a single swing. With only a few non-regenerating hit points, though, every attacker poses a hazard. Overextending and becoming confident is the surest way to lose a hitpoint, and you’ll blame yourself later when you have to forego a key mid-run weapon upgrade in order to recover your hit points.

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Then there are the true foes. As you progress further into your run, you’ll encounter Knights and Captains, each of whom pose a major threat. And just as you think you’ve mastered those encounters, you’ll find yourself up against empowered versions of those foes, who will have you on your heels in a heartbeat if you don’t keep up with their strikes. The exhilaration of almost escaping one of these difficult fights with a single hit point is the essence of Until You Fall.

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Although your runs in Until You Fall have some structure, including a few boss encounters along the way, the game doesn’t actually have a conclusion. Even after you’ve defeated the most tough opponent, there are always new weapon combinations and fighting methods to try, as well as more difficult difficulties to master. However, I believe it will take roughly 10 hours for players to become adept enough to defeat the final boss.

Immersion

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Until You Fall for Quest is a fantastic port of the PC version. While there are minor aesthetic improvements, the gameplay and visuals retain their heart and soul.

Although the ground texture could be improved and the foliage has become sparse and chunky, the game’s most interesting objects—namely your hands, weapons, and upgrade crystals—retain an impressive amount of geometric detail and much of the lighting sheen that keeps them from having the “cardboard” look that some Quest ports have. In general, the game appears to look better in motion through the headset than I’ve been able to capture with screenshots, owing to the sharp and well-defined in-game visuals compared to certain games that use hazy anti-aliasing (or lack it outright).

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Although the game’s many particle effects aren’t as complicated as the PC version, they’ve been tastefully replaced with thicker, ribbon and pedal-like particles that fit right in with the game’s unique neon art style.

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Except for the tether, there’s almost nothing lost in the Quest adaptation of Until You Fall, thanks to beautifully adapted visuals, solid sound design, and good music. Being free of a cable doesn’t affect the game drastically, but it does enhance immersion by allowing you to spin your body to face foes without concern of a cord twisting beneath your feet or interfering with your attacks.

Immersion in Until You Fall is based on how it feels rather than how it appears. Squeezing both grip buttons before a combat to summon your weapons into your hands—accompanied by a pleasant ‘shwiiinng‘ sound—seems to never grow old. The sensation of deftly slicing through a combination sequence while witnessing the enemy collapse in a ragdoll heap doesn’t hurt either.

You may not feel the need to be afraid of the enemy’s blade’s precise geometric border, but there’s something to be said for a game where you unconsciously assess the difficulty ahead of you when confronted with the game’s most difficult foes.

For the most part, what’s here is brilliantly executed. So successfully, in fact, that the biggest issue in Until You Fall is what it doesn’t have. The battle system’s strategic depth and moment-to-moment satisfaction scream for a broader scale, a more dynamic universe, and a proper plot.

Comfort

Until You Fall is an energetic game that is generally relaxing and offers a variety of comfort settings. Players are prompted to choose between seated and standing settings right away. Vignetting is enabled by default, although it can be turned off or minimized. I turned it off for the sake of immersion and was not bothered.

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Although there is some smooth stick movement, it is maintained slow since the game intelligently draws adversaries closer to you and wants you to block and dodge with your weapons and bodily motions rather than strafing around with a thumbstick. Dashing is used to move around more quickly, but it has a cooldown that prevents players from using it indefinitely.

If you put your mind to it, Until You Fall can be a workout. Players can block any strike if they can physically get their hand into blocking position with enough time to spare, and the game rewards physical effort by dealing extra damage for broad swings. Some encounters include dodging left/right and ducking, but the movement threshold is low enough that it may be done while seated.

 

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